The river Taylorsville
A parks page that lists a car park two thirds of a valley away
The Jordan River trail system, read from Taylorsville.
Taylorsville's own parks page is headed Jordan River Trail System, publishes the whole 45 mile figure, describes a paved trail plus an equestrian trail plus neighbourhood connectors plus a water trail still to come, and gives no mileage for its own stretch at all. On the ground that framing turns out to be right: four separate landlords, a creek arriving from 11,500 feet, and a car park owned by an electricity utility.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Taylorsville is not, so these pages are researched rather than lived: checked against city, county and venue sources, and dated so you can see how fresh they are. For the on-the-ground work here I lean on a Salt Lake County partner agent.
Start here
This city publishes the whole trail instead of its own piece of it.
Every other city on this water tells you how much of it belongs to them. Taylorsville does not. Open the parks section of the city's own website and the page is headed Jordan River Trail System, and what follows is a description of the entire thing: a 45 mile multiple use trail beside the river, made up of a paved trail, an equestrian trail, several connecting neighbourhood trails, and a water trail for boaters still to come. There is no municipal mileage anywhere on it.
Then the parks list does something stranger. Under the heading for the parkway it names all seven Salt Lake County trailheads on the line, in order, with addresses: Jordan Narrows at 17000 South 1200 West, Springview Farms at 14600 South 1150 West, FortyEighth Street at 4800 South 580 West, Holm at 1050 West 3800 South, Oxbow at 3300 South 1100 West, Redwood Nature Area at 2660 South 1160 West and Jordan River Trailhead at 2320 South 1000 West. Two of those are near the county's southern boundary and three are well north of this city. A municipal parks page that publishes a neighbour's car park two thirds of a valley away is telling you how it thinks about the river.
That framing turns out to be the accurate one from here, and it is why this page is about a system rather than a stretch. Taylorsville's eastern boundary is the water, its access points are owned by four different bodies, one of its trailheads is a creek junction and another is an electricity utility's car park, and its own published rules cover hours and dogs rather than distance. Read as a network, this stretch is more interesting than any mileage figure would have made it.
The system from Taylorsville
45
miles the city publishes, with no figure for its own stretch
7
county trailheads named on one municipal parks page
4
separate landlords holding river ground inside this city
5am to 11pm
the published trail hours in most sections
The seams
Four landlords hold riverbank inside one small city.
This is what a system looks like when you stand on it. The city's own parks table lists the ground along its eastern edge, and the ownership column changes four times inside a couple of miles. Nothing about the trail surface tells you when you have crossed from one to another.
| The ground | Who owns it | What that means on the day |
|---|---|---|
| Millrace Park, 5400 South 1150 West, 23.2 acres | The City of Taylorsville | A full municipal park with restrooms, pavilions, a stocked pond and the fenced off-leash area, and the only access point here where a city department answers the telephone |
| Little Confluence, 4800 South at the water, about 9 acres | Salt Lake County, on ground the city files as under development | A nature trail, a boat ramp and small pavilions, open around the clock, and genuinely unfinished. County contact 385-468-1854 |
| Jordan River Reserve, 4880 South 850 West, 10.4 acres | The State of Utah | Undeveloped open space with no amenities at all. It is on the map, it is real ground, and there is nothing built on it |
| Rocky Mountain Power Corridor trailhead, 925 West 4800 South | Rocky Mountain Power | A car park owned by an electricity utility opening onto 9.20 acres of parkway. An access point that exists because a transmission corridor happens to run here |
| FortyEighth Street Trailhead, 4800 South 580 West, 1.77 acres | Salt Lake County, with a Murray postal address | Listed on Taylorsville's parks page and addressed in the next city, because the river is the boundary and a trailhead has to sit on one bank |
| The Freedom Shrine, 612 West Taylorsville Expressway | The City of Taylorsville, with no amenities listed | A civic marker on the 4500 South corridor rather than a park, and a reminder that a parks table is not the same thing as a list of places to go |
Ownership, addresses and acreages as published by the City of Taylorsville, Salt Lake County, the Jordan River Commission and the Jordan River Foundation, checked 8 August 2026. Confirm anything you intend to rely on before travelling for it.
An electricity utility owning a trailhead is not a clerical oddity. High voltage transmission corridors need wide, permanently clear, permanently accessible strips of land, and river bottom is exactly the sort of ground that gets used for them. Where that corridor crosses a trail, the utility's access road and the public's access point become the same piece of tarmac. The city lists the result plainly: a car park at 925 West 4800 South, owned by Rocky Mountain Power, opening onto 9.20 acres of parkway. It is one of the clearest illustrations anywhere on this river of why a long trail is a stitched thing rather than a designed one.
The junction
A stream from 11,500 feet finishes its run on this bank.
Little Cottonwood Creek rises near Cecret Lake at about 11,500 feet, comes down through its canyon, crosses Sandy, Midvale and Murray over roughly 27 miles, drains a basin of 46 square miles and arrives at the Jordan River at about 4,490 feet, on the eastern edge of this city. The ground at that junction is Little Confluence Open Space, and the name is doing precise work: it distinguishes this arrival from the other Cottonwood creek's, which meets the same river a short distance north.
What is there is deliberately modest. The Jordan River Commission lists a nature trail, a boat ramp and small picnic pavilions, with fishing, paddling and birding as the published activities and 24 hour access. Salt Lake County has planted hundreds of cottonwoods and willows on it through its Million Trees Program with TreeUtah. The city's own parks table is more cautious still, calling it 9.06 acres of open space under development with potential pavilions, walking trails and a boat pull-out area. Two authorities, two descriptions, one site part way through becoming itself.
The value of it as a place to stand is that a confluence is the one point on a trail where the system stops being an abstraction. Water that fell as snow above a ski resort is arriving at a river that will carry it north to a salt lake, and the trail you are standing on threads between the two. The county parkway page carries the whole route, the water trail rules and the safety cautions that anyone putting a craft in here needs to read first.
A trail with a confluence on it is a trail that explains itself, which is more than most miles of paved path manage.
The honest part
A system has seams, and this is where they show.
A network built by many hands is not the same as a route designed by one, and this stretch is a fair place to see the difference. Here is the accurate version rather than the promotional one.
The four surfaces here do not behave alike. The paved parkway is level, wide and usable in February. The nature trail at the confluence starts gravelled and turns into genuine dirt, roots and leaf litter within a few hundred yards. The equestrian trail the city names is a separate thing again, and most people on the paved surface never register that it exists. And the connecting neighbourhood trails the city mentions are exactly that, short local links rather than a continuous secondary route. Expecting one consistent experience from a page headed with a single mileage is the commonest disappointment on any long urban trail.
The published rules are municipal rather than systemwide, which is the other thing a network does to you. Taylorsville publishes 5am to 11pm as the hours in most sections, lead only for dogs with one fenced exception, and a clean up obligation stated as a water quality measure rather than a courtesy. Those are this city's rules on this city's ground. Ride five minutes in either direction and you are under another authority's, and nobody puts a sign on the tarmac to tell you.
The setting is a working one and there is no point dressing it up. This is a flat river bottom threaded between arterial roads, canals, a transmission corridor and the back of a built out suburb. What it gives in exchange is cottonwood cover, level ground, easy parking at several points, and a genuinely different soundscape from the rest of a city that has a belt route running through the middle of it. Go for that and it delivers every time.
The water trail rules are not on this page, and that is deliberate. There is a boat ramp at the confluence and the city's own trail page says a water trail for boaters is still to come. The river has diversion structures on it that have to be walked around, and the launch points, the mapped reaches and the seasonal cautions are published by the Jordan River Commission and carried on the county parkway page rather than on a municipal parks list. Read those before you put anything on the water here. A ramp is permission to launch, not a description of what is downstream of it.
Where to read the rest
This page reads the network from one city's access points, and stops there.
Beyond the city line the trail belongs to other authorities and the county page takes it from there. These four are where the rest of it is written.
The whole route
The Jordan River Parkway
The 45 miles as one line, with the paddling rules, the segments and the cities on it.
Read the guideThe cold half
The valley in winter
What the season does to a flat paved corridor, and what it asks of a household here.
Read the guideDays out
Weekends in the valley
Eighteen cities' worth of Saturday options, arranged so the cost is visible first.
Read the guideThe other ground
Valley Regional Park
Ninety odd county acres on the far side of the city, with a pool and a library on them.
The park pageKeep reading
More of Taylorsville on The Local.
Things to do
The top 7, ranked
A county theatre, a 5,000 seat arena, a confluence and a farmhouse from 1906.
Read the guideThe park
Valley Regional Park
Ninety one acres, eighteen disc golf baskets, a pool and a library on one lawn.
Read the guideThe festival
Taylorsville Dayzz
Three days, two z's, and a 5K where some runners carry thirty pounds.
Read the guideThe corridor
The Redwood Road spine
Named for rot proof survey stakes, and now carrying its own state highway.
Read the guideMoving here
A mid valley address
Equidistant from everything, and landlord to almost none of its own landmarks.
Read the guideThe companion
Taylorsville, the whole picture
The theatre, the river system, the county park, the festival and the corridor, together.
Read the pageQuick answers
The trail system, answered.
The city does not publish a figure, and that is the unusual thing about it. Its parks page is headed Jordan River Trail System and gives the whole line as a 45 mile multiple use trail rather than quoting a municipal stretch, then lists all seven Salt Lake County trailheads on the corridor including ones near the county's southern boundary. If you need a mileage for a specific ride, measure the segment between two access points rather than looking for a city figure.
The city publishes 5am to 11pm in most sections. That is a municipal rule on municipal ground rather than a rule for the whole corridor, which is worth knowing because a long trail crosses several authorities and none of them puts a sign on the tarmac when you leave one. The same page requires dogs to be kept on a lead everywhere except inside the Millrace dog park, and asks for waste to be cleared as a water quality measure.
At several points, and they have different owners. Millrace Park at 5400 South 1150 West is the city's own and the most complete, with parking, restrooms and a pond. Little Confluence Open Space at 4800 South is county ground with a nature trail and a boat ramp. There is a car park at 925 West 4800 South owned by Rocky Mountain Power opening onto more than nine acres of parkway, and the county's FortyEighth Street Trailhead sits at 4800 South 580 West.
Four different bodies, inside a couple of miles. The City of Taylorsville owns Millrace Park and the Freedom Shrine. Salt Lake County owns the FortyEighth Street Trailhead and the confluence open space. The State of Utah owns the 10.4 acre Jordan River Reserve at 4880 South 850 West, which is undeveloped and has no amenities. Rocky Mountain Power owns the trailhead car park at 925 West 4800 South. Nothing on the trail surface tells you when you cross between them.
About nine acres at the point where Little Cottonwood Creek joins the Jordan River, at 675 West 4800 South, which the city's own table gives as 4800 South 677 West and 9.06 acres. The Jordan River Commission lists a nature trail, a boat ramp and small picnic pavilions with 24 hour access, and Salt Lake County has planted hundreds of cottonwoods and willows there through its Million Trees Program with TreeUtah. The city files it as open space still under development.
On Taylorsville's eastern boundary, at about 4800 South, at an elevation of roughly 4,490 feet. The creek rises near Cecret Lake at about 11,500 feet, runs about 27 miles down its canyon and across Sandy, Midvale and Murray, and drains a basin of 46 square miles before it arrives. The name Little Confluence distinguishes this junction from the other Cottonwood creek's, which reaches the same river a short distance to the north.
The city's trail page describes the system as including an equestrian trail alongside the paved trail and several connecting neighbourhood trails. It is genuinely part of the published system and it is also the part most users of the paved surface never notice. If riding is your reason for coming, confirm the current state and the access points with Salt Lake County or the Jordan River Commission rather than assuming a continuous route from a description of the system.
There is a boat ramp at Little Confluence Open Space and the city's own page says a water trail for boaters is still to come. Before using it, read the county parkway page and the Jordan River Commission's water trail material, because the river carries diversion structures that must be portaged and the launch points and seasonal cautions are published there rather than on any municipal parks list. A ramp is permission to launch and not a description of what is downstream.
Yes, on a lead, everywhere except one place. The city publishes a single fenced off-leash exception, at the Millrace dog park, and it publishes that fenced area as requiring a permit, which is a step further than most valley dog parks ask. Waste clearance is stated as a water quality obligation rather than a courtesy, which makes sense on a corridor whose whole purpose is a river. Sort the permit before you travel if the off-leash area is the point.
The eastern edge is the half of this city most buyers never walk.
A creek junction, a state owned reserve, a utility company's trailhead and a municipal park with a stocked pond sit on the same short run of water, and a house backing onto that corridor is a wholly different animal from one backing onto six lanes of state highway. Name the blocks and a Salt Lake County partner agent will walk the eastern edge with you, while I take the numbers and the lending questions.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.